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by The_Eclectic_Bookworm



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-07 21:25:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17968328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Eclectic_Bookworm/pseuds/The_Eclectic_Bookworm
Summary: “So you’ve warmed up to computers a little, huh?” she said very casually.“I-I suppose so,” said Giles, who couldn’t help but feel like he was missing something.“And you think they’re maybe worth getting to know a little more?” said Ms. Calendar. “Like, outside a workplace environment?”





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**Author's Note:**

> i think a lot about how we never saw giles and jenny go from awkward friends into moony-eyed dorks. so i took a stab at writing that.

Giles spent the night dancing, and regretted it sorely in the morning—pun intended. His back ached from the battle and the Bronze alike, he hadn’t gotten _nearly_ enough sleep, and Snyder’s godforsaken early-morning faculty meeting was grating on his nerves. It was difficult enough to stay awake; he felt he should get a bloody medal for managing to act civil.

Ms. Calendar had no such qualms when it came to professionalism. She showed up five minutes late, staunchly ignored the look sent her way by Snyder, sat down next to Giles (there was an audible murmur of surprise from the staff at _this_ ), and leaned back in the chair, eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses.

Giles was the only one close enough to hear her softly snoring, and it irritated him _tremendously—_ though not for the usual reasons. In times past, he might have been infuriated at Ms. Calendar’s lack of decorum and respect, judging her for both her tardiness and her obvious napping. Now, he was mostly just annoyed that she could sneak in a bit of shut-eye and he had to stay awake through this absolute nonsense.

“The library, Mr. Giles, has sustained earthquake damage,” Snyder announced about fifteen minutes into the meeting, with a dirty look at Giles as though the earthquake had somehow been his fault. “Of course, this renders it unusable until it’s properly fixed.”

“Obviously,” Giles agreed.

“We’ll be sending some workers in tomorrow to take a look at the damage,” Snyder informed him. “Make sure that all the books are removed so they can get to fixing things.”

“What—that’s— _tomorrow?”_ Giles sputtered. Next to him, Ms. Calendar jerked awake, giving him a semi-panicked what-did-I-miss look over the tops of her sunglasses. “I have to remove all the books from the library _tomorrow?”_ Giles tacked on.

Ms. Calendar first gave him a small thank-you smile, then stopped, frowning. “Wait,” she said, looking over at Snyder. “Seriously? Aren’t there people who can help him with that?”

“ _Thank_ you for volunteering, Ms. Calendar,” said Snyder with satisfaction. “As you two will both be doing this, none of the school budget will be going towards paying extra labor. And as I am conducting performance reviews in two weeks—”

“Can he seriously blackmail us into it?” Ms. Calendar whispered to Giles.

“He’s a power-mad moron,” Giles muttered back. “I’m fairly certain anything is within his jurisdiction.” He was well aware that the _entire_ faculty room was staring at him and Ms. Calendar, and was rather glad he was too tired to care about how this must look to them. Both of them sitting together and whispering to each other, Jenny wearing the same clothes from the day before—oh, lord, scrap that bit about not caring.Giles straightened his glasses and tried to stop blushing.

“— _as_ I am conducting performance reviews in two weeks,” Snyder continued, looking just as bewildered as the rest of the staff room to see the two most violently combative teachers sharing secrets, “I think you would both do well not to rock the boat. I’ll expect that library free of books before the workers show up tomorrow.”

 _Ugh,_ thought Giles, but decided against saying it.

“Ugh,” said Ms. Calendar. Then, “Can we at least have an extra day?”

“No,” said Snyder. “Library repairs cost extra on Saturdays. Meeting adjourned.”

As the faculty filed out (Giles did his _very_ best not to listen to the whispering teachers, all of whom had _things_ to say about why he and Ms. Calendar had shown up in disarray), Ms. Calendar put away her sunglasses, then turned to Giles with a small, tired grin. “I mean, I’d have helped you out anyway,” she said, “but it sucks that he’s making _you_ do this.”

“I’ve functioned on worse sleep before—”

“Yeah, but I don’t think you ever danced the night away,” said Ms. Calendar, grin widening.

“Oh, for—” Giles felt the twinge of familiar annoyance, now paired with an exasperated affection. “It was _one_ dance,” he said.

“Five,” said Ms. Calendar.

“It was _not!”_

“You weren’t keeping great track of the songs,” Ms. Calendar pointed out.

“ _You_ never let me leave the dance floor!” Giles countered. “More than one dance implies _breaks_ between the dance!”

Ms. Calendar scoffed, her eyes alight with the same warmth Giles felt. This argument was different, he thought, in a way that had his heart fluttering. “A dance is a song,” she said. “When the song ends, the dance itself is over, even if you’re still _dancing._ ”

“You never let _go_ of me long enough for the dance to be over,” Giles persisted.

Ms. Calendar gave him an open-mouthed grin. “You’re a hard guy to let go of, Rupert,” she said, and batted her lashes.

“Oh, ha ha,” said Giles, standing up. Ms. Calendar’s face fell a bit; he couldn’t imagine why. Awkwardly, and trying to recapture the fleeting comradery between them, he said, “To the library, then?”

Ms. Calendar was blushing. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah. Library. Obviously.”

* * *

 

The library was a wreck. Even without the debris left by the monster, the shattered glass from the skylight, and the broken table containing the Master’s skeleton (Giles supposed he should count himself lucky that Snyder hadn’t asked about _that_ ), there was still the fact that Giles’s books were _entirely_ in disarray. He couldn’t stop the distressed little whimper as he looked upon what had once been an organized research space.

And then he felt a hand on his shoulder. “Hey,” said Ms. Calendar. “We’re working under a weird time constraint, sure, but I’ve packed up way more stuff than this in _way_ less time.” She considered. “And hungover, actually. So we’re fine.”

As she headed towards the first pile of books, Giles frowned, playing the sentence back. “Why were you packing and hungover?” he asked.

Ms. Calendar stooped, picking up an armful of books, and turned back to Giles. He noticed, with a strange flutter, that she was holding them all with care. “I travel a lot,” she said, tried to shrug, and remembered just in time that she was holding the books. “I’m not really one to stick in one place for longer than a year. Whole lot of world, you know?”

“No,” said Giles honestly.

Ms. Calendar laughed, a sound of genuine, pleased amusement that Giles hadn’t heard from her before. Mostly, when she laughed, there was a biting edge of mockery or bitterness or some other flavor of one-upsmanship; Giles liked this laugh better. He wanted to hear it again. “Well, at least he’s honest,” she quipped, placing the books down on the checkout desk. “So you don’t travel much?”

Giles hesitated. Generally, when people had asked before, he had made some weak joke about stuffy academics and left things at that. But Ms. Calendar was currently the closest thing he had to a friend, and the first person in Sunnydale he had chosen to tell about his Watcher status. That felt important. “I spent the better part of the last twenty years at a desk job in the Watchers’ Council,” he said, “preparing myself to train a Slayer. I was more than desperate to prove myself worthy of the cause. It left little time for travel.” He smiled a little sadly. “I’d rather like to live the life you do,” he said.

Ms. Calendar shook her head. Her expression was more gentle than Giles had ever seen it—directed at him, at least. “It gets old,” she said. “Doesn’t leave a lot of time for friends, you know?”

Giles snorted. “And I suppose I make time for my sparkling social life in between the research and the nearly being eaten by monsters?”

That made Ms. Calendar smile. “Fair point,” she agreed. “So we’re both lonely—”

“You cannot possibly be _lonely,_ ” Giles scoffed, appalled by the very notion. “You’re one of the most outgoing, charismatic people I’ve met. How on earth could you not have made friends on staff already just by virtue of being yourself?”

Ms. Calendar blinked, then turned a rosy pink. Giles played his words back, and began to blush a bit himself. “Wow,” she said. “Um, that’s…kind of the sweetest thing anyone’s said to me in a _really_ long time.”

“Your bar is very low if you’re calling _me_ sweet,” said Giles dryly, which made Ms. Calendar laugh again. “Shall we start on the books?”

* * *

 

Giles was still having trouble getting used to the ease with which he and Ms. Calendar worked together. They had been assigned to tidy the staff room for a bake sale two months ago, and had spent more time shouting at each other than actually getting any work done. The teachers had been displeased, the bake sale had been bumped a week, and Principal Flutie had said, in an injured tone of voice, that _at Sunnydale High, we foster community, not combativeness!_ Ms. Calendar had responded to this by flipping Giles off behind Flutie’s back and stalking out of the office, leaving him to clean up the rest of the staff room on his lonesome.

But they had exorcised the demon together easily, Giles bringing out his old grimoire and Ms. Calendar typing without argument. They had researched the Hellmouth and the Master together, Giles finding books for Ms. Calendar to page through. And now they were sorting books into boxes to pack away, and to Giles’s utter shock, Ms. Calendar took to his supernatural cataloguing system like a fish to water.

“You were expecting me to struggle with this?” she laughed, handing him a stack of books for the box labeled _Demons—Dismemberment._ “It’s honestly not that hard.”

“It requires a, a rudimentary understanding of the contents of each book,” stammered Giles, his heartbeat picking up as he looked at her. He was a bit tired, he told himself. Tired, and the tea in the staff room was undoubtedly much too caffeinated. “Or at the very least, an ability to assess—”

“Rupert,” said Ms. Calendar, looking at him with playful sympathy, “has your only exposure to human society been Buffy, Willow, and Xander for all these months? You know I love those kids, but Willow’s the only one among the bunch who even knows what the Dewey Decimal System _is._ ”

“I-I must confess, I am a bit…unused to adult company,” Giles agreed. “It’s been a while since England.”

“So you had friends over there?” Ms. Calendar placed another stack of books on the counter.

Giles stilled, unsure how to answer that question. After a good few seconds of silence, he knew that he had inadvertently answered it anyway. “No,” he said simply.

Ms. Calendar looked up, and it took Giles a moment to recognize that the sympathy in her eyes was no longer teasing. “Well,” she said, and bumped his shoulder. “The English are obviously morons.”

“I’m  _sorry?”_

“Excluding you!” said Ms. Calendar hastily, wincing. “I just meant…they’re missing out.” She gave him a nervous little grin. “You’re kind of an okay guy when you’re not telling me how computers are going to directly cause the end of all human interaction.”

“Did I say that?” said Giles, alarmed. “Truly, computers aren’t all that bad. I really would like to learn more about them.”

Ms. Calendar’s face then went through a series of expressions of which Giles couldn’t fathom the meaning. First shock, then disbelief, and then a sort of stunned smile crept across her face. “So you’ve warmed up to computers a little, huh?” she said very casually.

“I-I suppose so,” said Giles, who couldn’t help but feel like he was missing something.

“And you think they’re maybe worth getting to know a little more?” said Ms. Calendar. “Like, outside a workplace environment?”

And at that moment, something revealed itself to Giles that he had somehow never noticed before: Ms. Calendar was _extremely_ beautiful. In the days when they were at each other’s throats, all he had seen was a veritable hurricane of a woman who refused to admit when she was wrong, and his frustration had eclipsed any notice he might have taken of her sweetly quirky smile or her dark, sparkling eyes. He was not at all thinking about computers—had completely forgotten the question she had posed—when he said, rather breathlessly, “Yes, I think—yes.”

Ms. Calendar smiled, leaning closer—

“ _Attention,”_ blared Principal Snyder’s voice through the intercom, and Giles and Ms. Calendar jumped apart. “ _A reminder to our students that the library will be closed until further notice. Also, Miss Cordelia Chase is still due at my office for questions regarding security footage of her car driving into the school. Thank you.”_

“Seriously?” said Ms. Calendar, glaring at the intercom. “You choose _now_ to do this?”

Giles leaned against the checkout desk, rather stunned by the about-face his feelings for Ms. Calendar had taken. He had always felt strongly towards her, even when they had been workplace enemies, so it stood to reason that his feelings would remain strong in this new context. But being hit with romantic inclinations this fast, and this unexpectedly—

“Books?” said Ms. Calendar.

“Yes,” said Giles, hurrying past her to the stack of books still on the checkout counter. “Um, these go in—”

“Evisceration,” said Ms. Calendar, her voice softening. Giles turned to look at her, and saw that she was giving him a sweet little smile the likes of which he had never seen her give _anyone_ before.

“Yes,” said Giles again, feeling the beginnings of a rather soppy grin of his own.

* * *

 

Ms. Calendar turned on the radio when they were three-fourths of the way through the books, humming along to the little jingle played before the news. Giles, however, found himself rather tired of current events. “Might I change this?” he asked.

Ms. Calendar looked up, surprised. “I thought you’d like this,” she said. “Aren’t you all Mr. Intellectual?”

The fact that she said this without a hint of mockery made Giles feel too ridiculously fluttery to manage a coherent sentence. “Well, that’s—y-yes,” he stammered, horrified with himself. This was the woman he had had _actual debates_ with about the merits of technology, and now a schoolboy crush had him unable to speak around her? “Yes, I simply—news has been rather, rather draining lately. I think I’d like some music.”

“Classical?” said Ms. Calendar.

“Not particularly,” said Giles, and flipped the stations until something with a respectable beat came on. As he turned to Ms. Calendar, he saw that she was staring at him incredulously. “What?”

“This is rock and roll,” said Ms. Calendar.

“Yes, it is,” said Giles, bemused. “Is that surprising to you?”

“ _Yes,_ it is!” said Ms. Calendar, and gestured towards Giles as though this somehow clarified things. “You’re—I once saw you call a _vending machine_ an _infernal contraption!_ There is a running theory that you’re some kind of time traveler from the nineteenth century!”

“Well, I’m a modern Regency man,” said Giles mildly. “Besides which, I figured classical music might put us both to sleep rather quickly. You’ve gone through how many cups of coffee in the last hour?”

“Twelve,” said Ms. Calendar.

“That  _cannot_ be healthy,” said Giles.

“I was up all night,” said Ms. Calendar. “I’ll take a sick day tomorrow and sleep it off.” She was grinning. “It’s a good song, though,” she said, and then extended her hand to Giles.

“ _Oh_ no,” said Giles. “No. You have gotten more dancing out of me than I have done in the last five years at _least._ ”

“C’mon, Rupert,” Ms. Calendar wheedled. “The song’s already half over, and I _really_ need to move around a little in a way that’s _not_ lifting heavy books.”

In answer, Giles crossed his arms, leaning stubbornly back against the checkout desk.

“You know what,” said Ms. Calendar, looking more amused than annoyed, “I am too tired to push this issue,” and shrugged off her leather jacket, placing it on the table and beginning to dance herself. She had moved with adrenaline-fueled precision, the night before, dark hair falling down and out of her messy bun, but it was clear that the sleep deprivation was beginning to hit her rather hard. Still, she danced, eyes fixed determinedly on Giles as if daring him to comment on her _utter_ childishness—and then she swayed, and fell.

Giles honestly didn’t decide to catch her. He didn’t even make the conscious choice to take two running steps across the room as soon as he saw her sway. All he knew was that, the moment she should have hit the floor, she was somehow in his arms instead, forehead bumping against his.

They hadn’t been this close when they were dancing. She smelled like magic and too much coffee and something that was just _her,_ and Giles was having trouble remembering to breathe. Part of him was afraid that any sudden movement would shatter the moment. Part of him was afraid that she would let him pull her closer.

“Thanks,” said Ms. Calendar, her voice suddenly thick with sleep. “Guess the whole zero-hours-of-rest thing is catching up to me, huh?”

Giles steered her gently to a chair, helping her sit down at the checkout desk. Removing his jacket, he draped it over her shoulders, telling himself very firmly that her bright, adoring eyes had more to do with sleep deprivation than genuine appreciation. “Rest up,” he said. “I can finish up the books while you nap. I’m quite practiced at keeping late hours.”

“I drank too much coffee to get any sleep,” mumbled Ms. Calendar, who was already resting her head on her arms.

“I’m sure you did,” said Giles, patting her shoulder.

Ms. Calendar sighed, leaning into his touch. “Just gonna…relax for a little ‘n then I’ll, I’ll…” She trailed off, her breathing evening out.

Giles tried to remind himself that there were a thousand and one reasons that a Watcher having a relationship was a bad idea. All these reasons flew very neatly out the window when Ms. Calendar murmured something incoherent, then tugged his jacket closer around her. _She’s so small,_ he thought, _and yet she’s so much more confident than I think I’ll ever be._

Ms. Calendar opened her eyes again, half-awake. “Rupert?” she said.

“Mm?” said Giles.

“I wanna dance with you again later,” said Ms. Calendar, and promptly fell back asleep. Giles spent the next twenty minutes analyzing this statement and got absolutely no work done.

* * *

 

(“Shameful,” said Principal Snyder. “ _Shameful._ Napping on the job, Ms. Calendar? Wandering around muttering to yourself, Mr. Giles? Now I am going to have to pay people to remove the books. On the _weekend._ ”

“We make a good team,” said Ms. Calendar.

“That we do,” said Giles.

“I am never putting the both of you on an important project again,” said Principal Snyder, and completely missed the high-five Ms. Calendar gave Giles under the table.)


End file.
